Jerry Brown Tells Californians to Live ‘Lighter’

Jeff Chiu / Associated Press2 Dec 2015

In an interview before jetting to Paris for the UN climate change conference with a large entourage in tow, California Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday that Californians would need to adopt a “lighter, more elegant lifestyle” to save earth from destruction.

Brown told David Bienick of Sacramento-area NBC affiliate KCRA that he is on a “life-and-death mission” to save the world. His goal is to show the world what California is doing to reduce emissions, and encourage other nations to commit to doing the same.

“We’re going to be able to be create a lighter, more elegant lifestyle over time through technological innovation….We do need to change our habits, live closer to where we work, reduce the power of our automobiles, or get them into an emission free kind of technology.”

Bienick also interviewed State Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), who said that the real global threat was radical Islam.

Brown’s trip, which includes several California Democrats and no Republicans, is being funded by “PG&E, The Nature Conservancy, the Schwarzenegger Institute at USC, BMW, Calpine, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Nicholas Institute at Duke University, the Energy Foundation, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power,” KCRA reports. Bienick asked Brown what the donors hope of gain. “They get to spend their surplus funds, of which they all have lots of. But in addition to that, they can help solve this problem.”

Brown’s exhortation to live “a lighter, more elegant lifestyle” is similar to other pronouncements he has made in the past. Last year, after Toyota announced that it was leaving California for Texas, Brown said: “We’ve got a few problems, we have lots of little burdens and regulations and taxes. But smart people figure out how to make it.”

His vision of a smart, light, elegant state bears little resemblance to the economic and demographic reality of California outside of a few elite, coastal liberal enclaves.